At 37 degrees 27 minutes 12 seconds north latitude, Booker is the northernmost municipality in Texas. Booker used to be in La Kemp, Oklahoma, but in 1917 moved south to be near the brand new Santa Fe railroad. The town adopted the name of railroad engineer Frederick Booker who helped orchestrate that move. The good folks of La Kemp hightailed it to Texas as fast as they could. Like me. Canyon, Texas, home of WT and two and one-half hours south of Booker, is about halfway between Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Brownsville, Texas. Booker was the first school I visited on a tour of 132 high schools in the Panhandle and the South Plains. It was January 5, 2017, and as cold a day as my wife Mary and I ever experienced in Texas. A snow storm was predicted and materialized. When I mentioned to a faculty member that I was going to Booker, he asked me where it was. I told him I wasn’t sure, but I reckoned it was about six miles south of the North Pole. I was right. Booker is sparse. The population density is 1260 people per square mile. For comparison, the population density in Manhattan is 66,940 people per square mile. The six-foot social distancing requirement to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 is clearly more easily accomplished in Booker. Booker ISD is a small district. The high school in 2017 had a total of 144 students; twenty-six were juniors and twenty-five were seniors. The Texas Tribune currently reports an “A” accountability rating, a graduation rate of 100%—very rare, and a dropout rate of 1%—also very rare. Students, community members, teachers and school leaders all impressed me as frontier people. Silicon Valley, Booker and New York City are all frontier outposts. Silicon Valley is the west-coast frontier of the digital world. Booker is a Midwest frontier for farmers, ranchers and petroleum producers. The ground and what lies beneath it are there and available for anyone with a frontier mindset and learned abilities. New York City is the east-coast frontier of the financial and trade world. Frontiers are often where one finds them. Booker ISD is a small district. The high school in 2017 had a total of 144 students; twenty-six were juniors and twenty-five were seniors. The Texas Tribune currently reports an “A” accountability rating, a graduation rate of 100%—very rare, and a dropout rate of 1%—also very rare. Students, community members, teachers and school leaders all impressed me as frontier people.
Frederick J. Turner, a student of the frontier, made this observation in 1893 regarding the nature of people on the frontier:
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